


Keep You Always

by Sholio



Category: Alliance-Union - C. J. Cherryh
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, F/M, Multi, Team Bonding, Team as Family, slight ot4-ish overtones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-09 01:26:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14706497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: "You're off duty," Graff said, "not doing anything, and everyone up top has their hands full. And I trust your team with a baby.""Why?"Meg all but wailed at his back. "Idon't trust us with a baby!"Or: Accidental baby acquisition, Hellburner style.





	Keep You Always

"Heads up," Dekker murmured, and Meg glanced up. They were playing cards in the rider crew lounge, up in the _Norway's_ forward hold where the riders stayed, and it took her a moment to notice where Dek was looking, toward the lift to operations deck. Graff had just stepped out with a package and was making for their end of the lounge.

They were both exhausted, gritty-eyed and sore in the bones. They'd had to go through jump right after the _Norway_ had scooped up the riders, and even having swapped off with the alterday shift and showered, they were still fuzzy from trank and in that uncomfortable "too wired to sleep" state that too much time in the cockpit tended to leave behind.

It wasn't the kind of state in which a woman wanted to see an officer heading her way, especially when he was obviously on a mission and not just dropping by to socialize, as Graff sometimes did. She hoped it wasn't trouble, hoped to hell it didn't mean going back on duty. The all-clear had sounded through the ship after they came out of jump, which should have meant there was no one at the jump point with them, no one likely to be since they'd left the Mazianni ship partly crippled and on a vector to a different jump point entirely, and their next jump after alterday cycle would be to Pell, and friendly space.

... time to rest, then, as the relief crew went on duty. It was just them in this lonely bit of space, the _Norway_ and her crew -- along with several dozen refugees they'd picked up from the Mazianni ship, most of whom were presently quarantined, Meg had heard, in the cargo hold, because they'd come on board with some kind of sickness that had run rampant among them while the Mazianni held them crowded into a cargo container -- god only knew why, for ransom perhaps, or perhaps the Mazianni had developed their own brand of slavery now. But that part, at least, was not their problem.

And yet it seemed likely to _become_ their problem, because here came Graff, looking as stressed and exhausted as Meg felt, and holding a bundle wrapped in a towel which he shoved unceremoniously into her hands.

She took it by instinct, nearly screamed as it developed legs and arms and Attitude right there as she was holding it. It squawked a little, and so did she.

"Your crew's off duty for the next shift, correct?" Graff said. "Thanks for the assist."

"What in the hell?" Meg held at arm's length the ... thing, baby, it was a _baby,_ a human baby from the look of it (she assumed). It jerked its arms and legs, and stared back at her from cloudy, confused eyes.

"Where'd that come from?" Dekker asked, sounding panicked as if he'd found something alien in the shower.

"Where do you think? _Star's Song."_ That was the merchanter ship the refugees had come from, a dead hulk now, stripped and refitted by the Mazianni.

Meg looked up, sharp, while the child writhed in her hands, all skinny arms and a face like a thundercloud. Its towel was falling off. "Wait, the hell, you're giving us a _quarantine_ baby?"

"Doc cleared her. Hasn't got it or she'd be showing symptoms, can't leave her in there with the sick."

"Yeah, but _us?"_

"You're off duty, not doing anything, and everyone up top has their hands full. And I trust your team with a baby."

" _Why?"_ Meg all but wailed at his back. " _I_ don't trust us with a baby!"

Graff swung back toward the lift with a wave that was just this side of jaunty.

Meg looked helplessly at Dekker and tried to shove the baby in his direction. He shook his head and pushed his chair back on its short track. "Don't look at me."

"Orders, Dek. We got to take care of this baby."

"XO gave him to you."

His eyes were laughing at her. Bastard. The baby picked that moment to screw up its face and start a thin, keening wail. 

Ben and Sal came out of quarters, where they'd been taking their turn in the shower after losing the dice-throw for first turn, Ben with tousled wet hair and Sal with her hair unbraided and loose in a kinky dark cascade. They paused and took in the scene for a moment.

"Graff," Meg explained between her teeth, over the baby's escalating cries. "Orders. Refugee baby got farmed out down here. God knows when we can send it back -- soon, if we're lucky; Pell, if we aren't. _This_ scuz is helping not at all."

Sal and Ben looked on for a minute more, and then:

"Neither are you," Sal said. " _Not_ how you hold a baby."

"Give it. God." Ben took it abruptly out of her hands, and while she and Dekker stared in open-mouthed astonishment he plopped it on his shoulder, hand under its bottom -- somewhat the way Graff had been holding it, come to think of it. "Put a sock in it, you're in public, asshole," Ben told the baby.

Sal leaned in and patted its back, and it settled down to small hiccupping noises against Ben's shoulder.

Meg and Dek shared a look, and Dekker said, "If I was gonna lose it out here, this isn't how I thought it'd happen. You're seeing this too, right?"

"Tres spooky," Meg agreed. "Some story here we don't know? Something you never told me, _partner_ \--?" Long stare at Sal here, who glared back.

"Institute," Sal said. "You think it was all half-grown Shepherd brats, friend? All ages in there, it was."

"They make you take a turn in the Nursery too, huh," Ben said to her.

"Every Monday. Two hours. Brut cruel."

"Give you any food for this thing?" Ben asked Meg.

 

***

 

Med tech came down two hours later with a kit, food and bottles and diapers. By that point, Sal had changed the baby using a cut-off bit of towel, and Ben had given it a few sips of beer, over Meg and Dekker's objections. "Either of you know anything about babies? No? Then shut it. We used to do this at the Institute. Shuts them right up."

"Explains a lot about _you,"_ Dekker said.

But the baby _had_ shut up, and was napping like a quiet little lump in Sal's lap, wrapped in a couple of pillowcases Dek had fetched from quarters (a blanket was too big), while Sal held a poker hand above its head. The med tech gave them the kit, explained how to shake up a pouch of baby formula with water and pop out the nipple, and left them alone.

The baby tucked happily into its lunch, and Ben and Sal quickly developed a rhythm of passing the baby and its feeding pouch back and forth when one of them needed to play their hand, while Meg and Dekker watched them as if their partners had been replaced with a pair of eetees.

"How?" Meg whispered. " _How_ are they good at this?"

"Take a turn?" Ben asked loudly. "Seeing as you're being useful over there and all."

"No!" Meg said, but Sal hot potato'd the baby into her lap before she could get out of reach, in a brush of arms and floating hair-cloud depositing the baby in the crook of one arm, the feeding pouch in her other hand.

"Like this, see." Sal leaned over her shoulder, arm wrapped warm around her shoulder and hair in soft, drifting wisps against Meg's cheek. Her hand guided Meg's on the pouch, holding it until the questing little mouth took it again. Then Sal let her go.

"Christ," Meg whispered, looking down at the scary-helpless thing in her lap. It watched her as it ate, eyes wide and lashes dark and mouth sucking down busily. Weirdly hard to look away from.

"You think it's thinking things in there?" she whispered. She was dimly aware of Dek leaning against her shoulder, hand on her arm, just watching with his chin against her ear.

"Institute ones sure weren't," Ben said from across the table. "Dumb as rocks."

 

***

 

The baby nodded off after its bottle, and adrenaline crash was hitting the adults about that time too, fit to knock them out where they stood. Sal carried the baby on their way back to quarters, and then they just stood for a minute as a new problem occurred.

"Where you gon' sleep with these things?" Sal asked.

"You're the Institute experts," Dekker said, sarcastic to the last even when he was weaving with exhaustion to the point of leaning on Ben (who'd given up trying to shove him off and had a long-suffering look as if he was simply resigned, at this point, to being Dekker's crutch). "Where'd you put them back then?"

"They had a room. Baby pods, tres petite."

"Yeah, well, we don't have that here," Meg said. "Babies can't need special equipment to sleep or the human race would've died out back on Terra. Think you two could just take it to bed with you?"

"Us, huh?" Ben said, making another halfhearted attempt at fending off a half-asleep Dekker.

"You're the ones who know what you're doing."

"Yeah, fine." Ben gave Dekker a shove toward the door of his and Meg's room. "Go to bed, then. Useless."

With Dekker crashed hard, Meg brushed her teeth in the head with the door open, to the soundtrack of small settling noises from Ben and Sal's room, mostly having to do with baby positioning. ("Gonna suffocate there, cher." "How do these things _live?"_ ) A vague sense of responsibility made her consider tapping on their door and offering ... she wasn't sure, maybe offering to spell them in the night, maybe just wanting to tuck her nose up against the baby's head again for a minute, silly as that was.

 

***

 

Meg had dim recollections of waking more than once to the sound of people moving around and occasionally a thin, high wail from next door, but she was jolted out of deep dreams of a sudden, with her arm flung over Dekker and the door to their room half open, spilling dim light onto them. As her brain rebooted, something warm and small and heavy for its size, funny-smelling, and making a faint whimpering sound landed in the space between her other arm and the bed, and kicked her in the ribs.

A dark shape leaned over her. "Ben and I took a vote," Sal said in a sleep-thick voice, "and decided it's your turn. Here. Packet on the swing-out table has the food if you need to feed it."

Meg heard her own faint noises of protest echoed by Dekker, and more incoherently by the baby.

"We just fed it. All it's likely to do is sleep. God!" and Sal slammed the door.

 

***

 

"Sleep well?" Sal asked sweetly when they came out in the morning, Meg bleary eyed and Dekker carrying the baby. She was sitting between Ben's knees, him on the fold-down couch in their little private living space between the bedrooms and her on the floor while Ben did up her braids with a comb and oil, hands moving smooth and fast with the long ease of practice.

Dekker grunted, handed off the baby to Meg, and lurched into the head.

" _Not_ a morning person, that boy," Ben said.

"Tres sad."

"I hate you both," Meg said, awkwardly shifting the baby into the crook of her arm, and went fumbling for baby food and coffee, hoping she didn't get the two mixed up.

 

***

 

The med tech picked up the baby and took it back upstairs when he came down to hand around trank for the jump to Pell.

"Was wondering what to do with a baby in jump," Dekker said. "They trank 'em, do you think?"

"Merchanters must," Sal pointed out.

Odd thought, that. Different life.

They went through jump as they usually did when not on duty, tranked out and strapped down in quarters, all in the same room, hand in hand in hand in hand. Just easier that way. No worries when you woke up, wondering where people were. Meg came out of it fuzzy-mouthed and thickheaded, Dek up against one side, her other hand twined (this time) in Ben's.

No scramble order. No need to do anything in the aftermath except choke down some nutrient packs and water, sprawl around and wonder aloud whether it was worth getting up and going down to see about proper food, or just wait out the fuzzy, sick feeling here.

A different life from the war, that was for sure. Being peacekeepers. Picking up refugees. Feeling like they were doing good things, not just finding green dots in the darkness to shoot at.

Lying half on Dekker's arm, Meg looked around the room at the people she'd spent (it seemed) the better part of her life with. "Baby made me think," she began, and paused.

"No good sentence ever starts like that," Ben said. He grimaced as Sal shoved a nutrient pack at him. "Want to see me sick when we spin down for station docking, just keep that up."

"Did you ever wonder," Meg tried again, "about ..."

The words wouldn't come. _She_ hadn't wondered, was the thing. When she was a young woman, kids were a complication she severely did _not_ want; no kind of a mother, was Meg Kady. And when she was older, even before the rejuv, it just ... wasn't something to wonder about, it simply _was not._

But she wondered now. She knew you couldn't raise a baby on a carrier; it'd be a choice between _Norway_ and a different life, and she didn't even know what another life looked like, these days.

But she hadn't even realized what it might be like. _Not_ like what she'd grown up with, insystem -- parents and child, a little closed unit. Maybe something more like what the merchanters had, a child rotated between a whole group of adults, no real distinction of _parent_ and _aunt_ and _uncle_ , not really in a meaningful way ...

Just family. Just that.

"We just got rid of that one and you want another?" Ben said, while Dek looked faintly panicked, and Sal merely shrugged, which could mean nothing and anything, as Sal's shrugs often did.

"Just bringing it up, don't make a case, _God."_

"Don't volunteer _me,"_ Sal said, arm sprawled over Ben's shoulders. "Go to Cyteen, grow one in a tank."

"Talley was grown in a tank," Dekker pointed out. "Seems okay."

"Tell me none of you think about it?" Meg said. "I'm not saying _baby._ I'm saying _what next._ I'm saying, there's an _end_ to this, we beat the odds so far but we won't beat it forever, know what I mean?"

"War's over," Sal said.

"War's over, but feels a lot like we're still fighting."

"Someone's got to." Dekker. Soft.

 _Young_ rab. Young, still. Can't catch up years, can't turn back the clock. Always going to be mother-old to him. Leave them behind on the station, have them catch up that way, come back to find them matching _her_ in years -- that was the only way. And that was not to be thought of. Time goes forward, never back.

She sighed and leaned on Dekker; he put his arm around her and kissed her hair. _Old_ rab way to think. The rab was gone back on Earth, gone in the Belt. Maybe she was the only one left who remembered what it was to have actually been there in the '15, on the Company steps when the blood ran red for the media feeds and nothing changed because of it.

Earth ... what was it, even. A rock in space. Basic silicate-iron structure. She'd brought in plenty like that. Belt itself wouldn't be a place you could recognize these days. Was R2 still there? Not the same place, for sure.

You thought different, out here. You thought in long arcs of time. You might see four generations of stationers grow up and get old, but still meet the same merchanters, the same Mazianni, hanging in time like you.

Everyone going forward to an uncertain future together.

"It's all right," she said, and closed her eyes and turned her head into Dekker's shoulder. What she wanted was here in this room; was upstairs too, perhaps, in a small scrap of humanity they'd help save. If their ridership took a rock, if the carrier bled out its atmosphere in Mazianni space, that was all right: they'd all go together, as they should, and the universe went on. Humanity itself went on, spreading further and ever further, away from one small, fragile planet, carrying all that it meant to be human -- the good and the bad -- deeper and deeper into space.

 _They_ had helped see to that. It wasn't a bad legacy for an old shuttle jock.


End file.
